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ABSTRACT:Values are qualities and beliefs orientating human actions and they change according to socio-economic variables such as gender, culture, education and income. Incorporating stakeholders' values and attitudes in the forest planning is essential for reducing conflicts among forest users and ensuring successful formulation and implementation of the plans. The paper focuses on the analysis of stakeholders' attitudes and preferences to the forest ecosystem services considering three types of attitudes: biocentric attitudes, social-altruistic attitudes, and individual attitudes. The stakeholders' preferences were analysed in four case studies in Italy, characterized by different socio-economic structures and relationship between people and territory. Socio-economic attributes were tested as predictors of stakeholder preferences. A semi-structured questionnaire was used to collect opinions and preferences from altogether 327 stakeholders' involved in forest planning. Results show that different background and culture influence the priorities given to forest ecosystem services. The study suggests paying attention to the evaluation of stakeholders' preferences to forest ecosystem services when defining forest management guidelines, which could contribute to reduce the distance between communities and decision makers.

During the last decades, forest management systems involving multifunctionality were developed and implemented at a local level all over Europe. Recently, the international scientific literature focused on the concept of ecosystem services. The substantial difference between forest functions and ecosystem services is that the former implies the capacity of forest ecosystem to supply goods and services to society, the latter focuses on the benefits that people obtain from the ecosystems. The aim of this paper is to analyse the social perception of the importance of forest functions and threats to forest multifunctionality in four case studies in the south of Italy, in the Calabria Region (Pollino, Sila, Catena Costiera and Serre Calabre). The study was structured in four steps: (i) stakeholder analysis, (ii) questionnaire survey, (iii) statistical analysis of the collected data, (iv) development of importance-threat matrices. At the end of the analysis, 71 representative stakeholders were identified and involved in the survey. Besides, the representative stakeholders were classified into four groups of interest according to their characteristics: public administrations, associations-non-governmental organizations, academia and research institutes, professional associations of the forest-wood-energy chain. The stakeholders assigned a level of importance to nine forest functions and to ten threats to multifunctionality using a 5-point Likert scale. The data analysis was elaborated distinguishing between groups of interest and case study areas. The overall results show that the two forest functions perceived as the most important by the involved stakeholders are biodiversity and landscape conservation, while a low importance was assigned to the productive forest functions. Regarding the threats, the overall results show that the most relevant threats are the forest fires that affect all functions followed by illegal cuttings and forest abandonment. The ranking of forest functions is similar in all four case studies, while the threat evaluations are more linked to local contexts.

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Forest certification in Calabria (Italy): attitudes, preferences and willingness to pay of manufactures and enterprises of forest-wood chain.Forest certification was born in the early 90s of the twentieth century in order to protect tropical and sub-tropical forests against a progressive deforestation and degradation. Forest certification is a valuable instrument for environmental protection and a useful tool of green marketing for forestwood chain enterprises. In the last decades, in developed countries there has been increased consumer awareness of environmental protection and environmentally friendly wood products. This consumers' attitude is related to the consumers' willingness to pay a premium price for environmentally friendly wood products. In the international literature, some studies have investigated the consumers' willingness to pay (WTP) for several certified wood products with different prices, while few studies have analyzed the willingness to pay of manufactures and enterprises of forest-wood chain for certified wood products. In addition, in the international literature there is a knowledge gap concerning the manufactures or consumers' willingness to pay for local wood products compared to equivalent products from other geographical areas. Starting from these considerations, the main aims of this study are: (1) to analyze the wood manufactures' willingness to pay a premium price for certified wood products; (2) to investigate the wood manufactures' attitudes and willingness to pay for regional/local wood products. The study was conducted as part of the "Ambi.Tec.Fil.Legno" project involving 127 manufactures and enterprises of forest-wood chain located in Calabria region. At the end of the questionnaire survey, the information provided by 40 manufactures and enterprises of forest-wood chain were processed and analyzed (response rate 31.5%). The results show that the main factors that influence the purchase decisions of enterprises are the trust in the seller and the durability of the product. Concerning the manufactures' willingness to pay for certified wood products, 40% of sample of manufactures is willing to pay a premium price with a mean value of 1.55%. A similar percentage of wood manufactures and enterprises (40%) are willing to pay a premium price to purchase local wood material with a mean value equal to 3.25%. The results of this study can support the decision makers in the definition of new strategies to enhance the forest sector in Calabria highlighting the potential benefits of forest certification and use of local wood at regional level.